Sometimes people insult me as an Indian which I find odd. I'm not Indian and I don't consider it an insult. As a Sri Lankan, I've gone to India a lot, but I don't know if I've ever been there. Which India? is the question I always ask myself. India obviously exists from far away, but as you get closer it's less obvious.

I can conveniently say ‘I'm Sri Lankan,’ but even that identity is a modern contrivance. Sri Lanka is younger than my grandparents. Identity used to be quite fluid across the narrow ocean, before it hardened into national ID cards and nation states. The last king of Sri Lanka was ‘Indian’, as were most queens for generations. As is my queen, if we're getting into it (my wife is half Indian). But the more you know India from within, the more confusing it is to hear how they speak of it without.

The India I hear about in the news is run rather racistly by Narendra Modi and has certain Hindutva views. But I've never been to that India. I have spent most of my time in communist Kerala, and in a Tamil Nadu run by MK Stalin. People, perhaps, don't understand how big and federalized India is. I certainly didn't. When I was younger I tried to follow the Ramayana trail and got exhausted around Mumbai. India is far bigger than I thought, and yet it's smaller too.

Each Indian state is quite independent and talks about itself more than India at large. Chief Minister is effectively Prime Minister on the ground. Beyond foreign policy and randomly demonetizing the money, I haven't felt the Modi influence at all. I've seen the hammer and sickle more than the BJP lotus and Stalin more than Modi. India presents as one thing to the world, but South India is really a different world. The BJP has just started running candidates there, but they don't get far. Hindu nationalism is really a northern phenomenon. Down south is its own set of nations, which are largely Hindu, but they're not dicks about it.

Thus when people ask me about (or take me to task for) India, I am a bit confused. Which India? I think, and how do I explain this to you? If I'm being honest, the more time I spend in India, the less I find it. India is something which appears solid to an outsider, but once inside it dissolves into dozens of states, hundreds of languages, and thousands of cultures; each quite confident and seemingly independent.

Nation states are not the natural state of the subcontinent. Even in Sri Lanka, which is relatively homogenous, being Sri Lankan is an external reference, we identify in other ways within. If you're at a police station (even for something mundane) you have to identify yourself, and saying Sri Lankan doesn't work. They look at you like you said you're from Earth. You have to be Sinhala Buddhist or Tamil Christian or whatever, something more specific. I don't know what that makes my children, a mix of such things, they have yet to need a police report.

Subcontinental identities exist in a quantum state like this, only taking a form when you literally have to give a form to the state. For example, I only found out my wife was Malayalee at the marriage registrar. Her father is Mallu (ie, from Kerala) and officially race passes through the father, but she identifies as Sri Lankan Tamil day to day and that's what I thought she was. And that's what she is, once you turn off the state's microscope.

But then even her father—who connects us to India—isn't really Malayalee at all. He comes from a Syrian Christian community which claims descent from Jesus basically, and only marries each other (he was amicably excommunicated for straying). These people are technically Indian, but as you can see, India is all over the place. I suppose it's fitting for the land of the Buddha, that identity is especially illusory there. Or here in Sri Lanka, or I guess in Nepal, where the Buddha is ‘actually’ from. Our identities don't really fit into a map, because a map is not the territory.

I'm not trying to mystify India, just to say that India mystifies me. The more I visit India, the less India I see, and the more specificities. Whenever I go to India I always end up somewhere else entirely, Tamil Nadu, or Kerala, or Karnataka, all very distinct places, each containing multitudes. Finding India is like trying to find your self in meditation. There is no ‘there’ there, if you really look at it closely.

This is why I don't consider it an insult to be called Indian. I don't even consider it quite incorrect. It's not an error so much as a category error. ‘I’ don't even exist, nevermind the rest of my national ID, as the Buddha said after he left Nepal and flew to Sri Lanka (in our belief system). As you can see we are all Indian in some sense, but really in the sense of people that called Native Americans Indians, which is to say, to the ignorant. When people ask me to explain or defend India, this is what I think. I understand it must be very confusing, which is precisely it.